Starchild wrote:
SC) If unrestricted immigration were truly "infeasible," then it would by
definition be limited by whatever is making it infeasible, so no further
controls would be needed in order to prevent it from occurring. (SC
You're assuming I meant "infeasible" from the perspective of the migrant. I
wasn't.
SC) But I think I understand the question you're getting at, and believe it
can be asked by replacing the word "infeasible" with "so undesirable as to
justify government laws restricting the number of people allowed to cross a
border." (SC
That's close, except my earlier post explained what I meant by infeasible
better than this, and in particular my objection would only justify
restrictions on the sort of migrations that tend to have the detrimental
impacts that I've discussed.
SC) Of course I realize many people won't see it that way; where disparities
exist, we always seems to find prejudice. (SC
"Prejudice" is literally unthinking pre-judgment. Ironically, it's
prejudice for you to pre-judge that I cannot oppose unrestricted immigration
for any other reason than some kind of bigotry. I'm really getting bored of
the paranoid and intellectually lazy tendency among libertarians to assume
that anyone who disagrees with them has the worst possible motives. If an
enemy of libertarianism were trying to wish one universal character flaw on
its proponents to ensure our movement would be self-marginalizing, it's hard
to imagine a more debilitating one. But hey, it makes libertarians feel
self-righteously good about themselves, and that's the whole point of
libertarian activism, right?
SC) Prejudice against an entire group of people on the basis of a
superficial characteristic like nationality or skin color is an
un-libertarian sentiment (SC
My postjudice classifies people according to the deep characteristic of
their multidimensional capital (financial, educational, cultural,
linguistic, etc.) and how that influences their likely impact on public
goods, natural monopolies, natural resources, and ultimately labor,
property, and political markets. I've never said that nationality or skin
color is an accurate proxy for this, and I deeply resent any implication
here to the contrary.
SC) the greater a cross-border disparity, the greater the need for allowing
additional freedom of movement so that the disequilibrium can be corrected.
(SC
If I wanted to live in conditions like Calcutta or Mexico City, I'd move
there. My desire to have those conditions not come to me is not
"un-libertarian" or "prejudiced". It has more to do with Tiebout sorting.
SC) I would also point out that the only way conditions on opposite sides of
a border logically *could* vary so widely is as a result of movement having
been *previously* restricted! (SC
Pointing out that something is a disequilibrium is not an argument against
maintaining it.
SC) My approach would be to liberalize all border controls in the world, so
that the natural equilibrium that will result from people being able to
"vote with their feet" will prevent disparities from ever growing to the
point where a person with generally libertarian views might be tempted to
say that they are too great to allow unrestricted numbers of people to
migrate. (SC
This is a prescription for living standards and conditions in Libertopia to
be dragged down to the lowest statist denominator. This would eliminate the
natural experiments that are by far history's strongest arguments for more
freedom.